Seeing Race and Sexuality

Seeing Race and Sexuality

Julietta Hua

Publisher:

University of Minnesota Press

DOI:10.5749/minnesota/9780816675609.003.0004

This chapter examines visual imagery accompanying state documents in order to make clear the sexualizing and racializing logic central to producing meanings around human difference and to connect this meaning making to the conferring of humanity and U.S. national belonging anchored in liberal notions of capitalist relations. By focusing on various visual images used to promote antitrafficking efforts (including campaigns sponsored by the Department of Health and Human Services, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime) as well as state and nongovernmental organization research into explaining geographical and cultural origins to sex trafficking, this chapter highlights the ways antitrafficking efforts in the United States both echo and help shape understandings of race, nation, gender, and sexuality. Specifically, it considers the juxtaposition of the Eastern European to the Asian victim in order to determine the racial conditions of inclusion through which sex trafficking narratives are articulated.

Minnesota Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.